CHAPTER XVI.

When Mr. Evandale knocked at Mrs. Meldreth's door, he was aware of a slight bustle within, followed by the sound of voices in low-toned conference; then came a rather sharply-toned "Come in!". As, however, the Rector still hesitated, the door was flung open by a young woman, whose very gestures seemed to show that she acted under protest, and would not have admitted him at all if she had had her own way. She was a fair-complexioned woman of perhaps thirty years of age, tall, well made, robust, and generally considered handsome; she had prominent light-blue eyes, and features which, without being badly cut, were indefinably common and even coarse-looking. In her cheeks a patch of exceptionally vivid red had so artificial an appearance, that the Rector could not believe it to be genuine; but later he gained an impression that it proceeded from excitement, and not from any adventitious source. The eyes of this woman were sparkling with anger; there was defiance in her every movement, even in the way in which her fingers were clenched at her sides or clutched the iron rail of the bed on which her mother lay.

The Rector wondered at her evident disturbance; it must have proceeded from something, that had occurred before his entrance, he concluded, and he looked towards the bed as if to discover whether the cause of Sabina Meldreth's anger could be found there.

But no--surely not there! The Rector thought that he had seldom seen a fairer picture than the one which met his eyes. Goodness, gentleness, youth supporting age, beauty unabashed by feebleness and ugliness--these were the characteristics of the scene on which he looked. Poor Mrs.

Meldreth lay back upon her pillows, her face wan and worn, her eyes wandering, her gray hair escaping from her close cap and straying over her forehead. But beside her knelt Enid Vane. The girl's arm was beneath the old woman's bowed shoulders; it was evident that in this position the invalid could breathe better and was more at ease. The sweet fair face, with its slight indefinable shadow deepened at this moment into a look of perfect pity, was bent over the wrinkled, withered countenance of the sick woman. Never, the Rector thought, had he seen a lovelier picture of youth ministering to the wants of age.

But a sense of incongruity also struck him, and he turned rather quickly to Miss Meldreth, whose defiant eyes had been fixed upon him from the first moment of his entrance into the room.

"You are Mrs. Meldreth's daughter?" he said, in a quick but not unkindly undertone. "Why do you let the young lady there wait upon your mother?

Can you not nurse her yourself, my good girl?"

Sabina Meldreth curtseyed, but in evident mockery, for the color in her cheeks grew higher, and her tone was anything but respectful when she spoke.

"Of course I can nurse my mother, sir, and of course a young lady like Miss Vane didn't ought to put her finger to anything menial," she said, with a sharpness which took the Rector a little by surprise. "I'm quite well aware of the difference between us. And"--anger now evidently gaining the upper hand--"if you'd tell Miss Vane to go, sir, I'd be obliged to you, for she is only exciting mother, and doing her no good."

"Your mother shows no symptoms of excitement," said the Rector quietly; "and I must say, Miss Meldreth, that your words do not evince the gratitude that I should have expected you to feel for the young lady's kindness."

"Kindness! Oh, kindness is all very well!" said Miss Meldreth, with an angry toss of her fair head. "But I don't know what kindness there is in disturbing my poor mother--reading hymns and psalms, and all that sort of thing!"

Mr. Evandale had hitherto wondered whether or no Miss Vane heard a word of Sabina Meldreth's acid utterances, but he had henceforward no room for doubt. The girl raised her head a little and spoke in a low but penetrating tone.

"Miss Meldreth," she said, "excuse me, but you yourself are disturbing your mother far more than I have done. See--she is beginning to be restless again; she cannot bear loud talking or altercation."

The Rector was astonished by the firmness of her tone. She was so graceful, so slight, so fragile-looking, that he had not credited her with any great strength of character, in spite of his admiration for her beauty. But what she said was perfectly true, and he hastened to lend her his support.

"Quite so," he said approvingly. "Mrs. Meldreth should be kept quiet, I can see"--for the old woman had begun to moan and to move her head restlessly from side to side when she heard her daughter's rasping voice. "Perhaps you would step into another room with me, Miss Meldreth, and tell me how this attack came on--if, at least, Miss Vane does not mind being left with Mrs. Meldreth for a few minutes, or if she is not tired."

Enid answered with a faint sweet smile.

"I am not tired," she said. "And poor nurse wants to speak to me when she is able. She sent to tell me so. I can stay with her quite well."

But the proposition seemed to excite Sabina Meldreth almost to fury.

"If you think," she said, "that I am going to leave my mother alone with anybody--gentleman or lady--you are mistaken. If you want her to be quiet, leave her alone yourselves--she'll stay quiet enough if she's left to me."

"Sabina," said Enid, with a gentle dignity of tone which commanded the Rector's admiration and respect, "you know that your mother wanted me to come."

"I know that she's off her head!" said Sabina angrily. "She doesn't know what she says or what she wants. It's nonsense, all of it! And meaning no disrespect to you, Miss Vane"--in a lower but sulkier tone--"if you would but go away and leave her to me, she'd be all the better for it in the end."

"Hush!" said Enid, raising her hand--the serenity of her face was quite undisturbed by Sabina's expostulation. "She is coming to herself again--she is going to speak."

There was a moment's silence in the room. The sick woman was lying still; her eyes wandered and her lips moved, but as yet no articulate sound issued from them. In apparently uncontrollable passion, Sabina stamped violently and shook the rail of the iron bedstead with her hands.

"She ain't going to speak; she is off her head, I tell you! She ain't got anything to say."

The Rector looked at her steadily. For the first time it occurred to him that the younger woman had some unworthy motive in her desire to silence her mother and to get the listeners out of the room. Dislike of interference, jealousy, and bad temper would not entirely account, he thought, for her intense and angry agitation. Had Mrs. Meldreth and her daughter some secret which the mother would gladly confess and the girl was fain to hide?

A feeble voice sounded from the bed.

"Is it Miss Enid?" said Mrs. Meldreth. "Has she come?"

"No," said Sabina boldly and loudly. "You go to sleep, mother, and don't you bother about Miss Enid."

"Miss Meldreth, how dare you try to deceive a dying woman?" said the Rector, so sternly that even Sabina quailed a little before the deep low tones of his voice. "Yes, Mrs. Meldreth, Miss Enid Vane is here, and you can say all that you wish to say to her."

"I am here, nurse," said Enid gently--she had always been in the habit of addressing Mrs. Meldreth by that title. "Do you want me?"

"Oh, my dearie," said the old woman dreamily, "and have you come to me after all? Sabina there, she tried to keep you away; but I had my will at last. Polly told you that I wanted you, didn't she, Miss Enid dear?"

"Yes, nurse, she told me."

"I'll pay Polly Moss out for that!" Sabina was heard to mutter between her closed teeth. But Enid took no notice of the words.

"I'd something to say to you, my dearie," said Mrs. Meldreth, whose voice, though feeble, was now perfectly distinct; "and 'dearie' I must call you, although I haven't the right to do it now. I held you in my arms, my dear, five minutes after you came into this here wicked world, and I've allus looked on you as one o' my own babies, so to speak."

The delicate color had flushed Enid's cheeks a little, but she answered simply, "Yes, dear nurse;" and, leaning down, she kissed the old woman's forehead.

The caress moved the Rector strangely. His heart gave an odd bound, the blood began to course more rapidly through his veins. He was a clergyman, and he was in the presence of a dying woman; but he was a man for all that, and at the moment when Enid's pure lips were pressed to her old nurse's brow, his whole being was stirred by a new emotion, which as yet he did not suspect was known amongst men by the name of love.

Sabina Meldreth had withdrawn from her station at the foot of the bed; she had moved softly to the side, and now stood by her mother's pillow, opposite to Enid, with her eyes fixed watchfully, balefully, upon her mother's face. But Mrs. Meldreth seemed unconscious of her daughter's gaze.

"I've something to say to you, my pretty," she said, with long pauses between the sentences--longer and longer as the laboring breath became more difficult and the task of speech more painful. "Sabina would nigh kill me if she knew. But I can't die with this thing on my mind. If I've wronged you and yours, and my own flesh and blood as well, I want to make amends."

"Is she--does she know what she is saying?" said Enid, raising her eyes to the Rector's face, with a touch of doubt and alarm in their pensive depths.

Before Mr. Evandale could answer Sabina broke in wildly.

"No, she don't--she don't know what she's saying; I told you so before!

She's got her head full of mad fancies; she's not responsible, and you've no business to listen to her ravings. It ain't fair--it ain't fair--it ain't fair!" She concluded with a sob of passion that broke, in spite of her efforts to control herself, from her whitening lips, but which brought no tears with it to her eyes.

"Control yourself," said the Rector gravely. "We shall make all allowance for your mother's state of mind. But, if there is anything that she ought to confess, any act of dishonesty or unfaithfulness while she served Miss Vane's parents or uncle, then let her speak and humble herself in the sight of God, in whose very presence she, like all of us, will shortly stand."

The Rector's solemn tones awed Sabina into momentary quiescence, and reached even the dying woman's dulled ears.

"It is the parson," she said feebly. "Yes, I'm glad he's here, and Miss Enid too. I can't go into the Almighty's presence with a lie on my lips--can I, parson? It would weigh me down--down--down to hell. I must confess!"

"You've nothing to confess," said Sabina, almost fiercely; "lie still and hold your tongue, mother! You'll only bring shame on us both; and it's not true--not true!"

"You know then that your mother has something on her mind? In God's name be silent and let her speak!" said Mr. Evandale.

Enid looked up at her with wondering pity. Indeed Sabina Meldreth presented at that moment a strange and even tragic appearance. The hot unnatural color had left her cheeks, her ashy lips were strained back from her clenched teeth, her eyes were wide with an unspoken fear.

Whatever she might say or leave unsaid, neither of those two persons who looked at her could doubt for another moment that Sabina Meldreth had a secret--a guilty secret--weighing heavily upon her mind.

Mrs. Meldreth's weak voice once more broke the silence.

"I never thought of its harming you, my dear," she said. "I thought you was rich and would not want houses and lands. And, when Mrs. Vane that now is came to me and said----"